Devine, James wrote:
>BTW, I find religious attitudes all the time in economics. For example,
>there's the worship of the market (the U of Chicago) or the worship of
>mathematics for its own sake (UC-Berkeley). But I think it's best to attack
>these faiths on the basis of facts, logic, and methodology (the unholy
>trinity) instead of simply insulting them.
>
Does the unfortunate, and often destructive, worship of abstract
constructs by people you disagree with, make more pallatable the worship
of the words of a 19th century social scientist by comrades you're
engaged in debate with?
>there are few people like this on pen-l (the relevant venue). However, it
>does make sense to quote the so-called "Master": Marx's theory forms a
>unified whole that differs from the standard academic orthodoxy and is often
>misinterpreted.
>
The belief that Marx's theory forms a unified whole is exactly the
problem. It is, like the theory of anybody interesting, full of both
detritus from other theories and false starts. The LOV/LTV is arguably
and example of both. I think that a lot of people, including some on
this list, wish Marx's theory formed a unified whole, and try to treat
it that way. It doesn't. That's not a bad thing. If it did form a
unified whole I think it would be an inert relic, a perfect museum piece
from a past master. As it is, it's just one person's contribution to an
ongoing conversation.
>I fact, a lot of people misrepresent Marx. I have poormemory for quotes, so I don't
>do it, especially since it's quite easy for someone to quote like crazy and still
>misinterpret Marx (as Jon Elster,
>among others, does so often). (As my old friend Steve Zeluck used to say,
>"the devil can quote scipture." Elster is much better when he does
>micro-theory than when he writes about Marx.)
>
I hesitate to ask this question, because I do not believe that you, Jim,
are a fundamentalist. But is not an abiding concern with the correct
representation of a particular text (especially given that we're not
dealing with a living author or a legal document or the dignity of some
people's history, and that our interest is primarily as students of and
actors in the contemporary world) a symptom of fundamentalism /
literalism?
>BTW, as Lakatos and Kuhn and others have pointed out, it is quite reasonable
>for scientists to cling to core propositions "even in the face of
>overwhelming contrary argument and experience." And economists do this: for
>example, orthodox economists continue to talk about "rational"
>utility-maximizing consumers even though these don't exist and don't make
>sense except in a very limited way (i.e., as tautologically true). This is a
>core proposition used to understand a more complicated world. Similarly,
>Marxian economics can use the true-by-definition law of value to understand
>the world.
>
Yeah, but that's not a good reason to hang onto a useless core
proposition. The idea of the rational utility maximizing consumer,
although often seriously wrong and arguably a poisoner of young minds,
does give us tractable models which are useful for many purposes. (It is
my belief that almost all economists, including those who despise
formalism and/or neoclassical assumptions, carry in their heads and
frequently use some nice little models of monopoly pricing, prisoner's
dilemmas, and so on.) And, although the rational actor assumption it is
often treated as true-by-definition, it also produces testable
propositions, as a growing body of experimental economics shows. In
contrast, almost all modern work on classical value theory is inward
looking, asking whether the idea is, or can be made, intellectually
coherent. Beyond that, it's no use. Its main function today is to anchor
a certain subset of Marxist discourse in a distinct and oppositionist
location.
Fred
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